North Carolina Couple Moves Beachfront Home Inland After Years of Erosion, Spending More Than $200,000

A Rodanthe, North Carolina, couple moved their three-story beachfront home 100 feet inland to escape encroaching shoreline, a project that cost more than $200,000.

Dr. Scott Twentyman and Cindy Doughty bought the house in 2002, when extreme weather and beach erosion weren’t on their radar. “It wasn’t on our radar at the time,” Twentyman told Realtor.com®. “We never even thought of it.” Over the years, erosion along Hatteras Island accelerated, with estimates showing the shoreline retreatting by as much as about 13 feet per year in places. The couple watched as neighbors’ houses along the bank disappeared into the Atlantic, a threat that intensified during storm seasons.

In 2019, the Outer Banks endured a string of severe storms, including three nor’easters and Hurricane Dorian, that underscored the peril facing homes built close to the water. Doughty recalled that when one neighbor’s house collapsed, a piling crashed through their back door and the first floor flooded with about two feet of water. “When one of the houses went down, one of the neighbor’s pilings crashed down through our back door, and our first floor had 2 feet of water in it,” she said. “It was crazy.” The couple concluded they had to act quickly to save their home, and they did not want to sell something so irreplaceable or lose the view they treasured.

To move the house, the Twentymans relied on the fortuitous reality that they owned a double lot, which provided a landing area for the relocated structure. Without that extra land, moving the house would not have been an option on the crowded Hatteras Island landscape. “Otherwise, there would have been no empty lots to move it to, since Hatteras Island is built out,” Twentyman explained.

The decision to relocate the home came with a steep price tag. Insurance typically does not cover proactive moves to save endangered structures, with one insurer reportedly requiring the house to fall into the ocean before any payout. “The insurance company says the house has to fall into the ocean before you get paid,” Twentyman lamented. “It’s idiotic.” As a result, the couple financed the move with a home equity loan on another property they owned.

They hired a contractor with a track record for large relocation projects. Expert House Movers, the team that moved the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in the late 1990s, was brought in to lift and transport the home inland. Twentyman said the team’s reputation gave them confidence the job would be done carefully, even under the pressures of hurricane season. “We hired a company called Expert House Movers, and they certainly earned their name,” he noted.

The logistics were complex. To prepare, the first floor—a entryway, laundry room and stairway—had to be removed so girders could be placed under the house to support it on new pilings. Planning and permitting stretched across months, a process that added to the stress as hurricane season loomed. “Once the house is gone, you can’t do anything with that land—it’s a total loss,” Twentyman emphasized, underscoring the urgency of the operation. The actual move, however, proved relatively swift: the structure was relocated in about 20 minutes once the schedule and conditions stabilized.

Doughty recalled that the night of the move tested their resolve. Although the weather was unsettled, a brief lull allowed the house to pass the critical stretch. “The wind died down, the rain stopped, and it got really quiet,” she said. The family could finally breathe after the house was settled on its new foundations. After the relocation, the pilings rested on bedrock rather than sand, a change that provided greater reassurance during subsequent storms.

There are no second thoughts about the decision, the couple said. They describe the move as a big leap of faith that paid off, preserving a home with a deep emotional resonance. “We both have such a strong emotional connection to this house, and we didn’t want to lose it,” Doughty said. Twentyman added that the experience brought them closer as a couple, having faced the challenge side by side. They also emphasized that, while painful, the financial and logistical burden was worth protecting the home’s view, accessibility and memories.

The Rodanthe case illustrates a broader set of climate-related realities affecting coastal communities. The Outer Banks region has long grappled with erosion and rising sea levels, and 2019’s storm sequence underscored how quickly shorelines can retreat and how expensive adaptation measures can be. For many homeowners, proactive steps such as relocating an entire dwelling are not feasible on their own budgets; insurance coverage remains a sticking point, often leaving residents to fund such moves through personal loans or other financing. The experience in Rodanthe serves as a high-profile example of the lengths to which coastal residents may go to preserve homes that are physically and emotionally tethered to their communities.

Ultimately, the couple’s decision to relocate their house to bedrock inland, rather than allowing the erosion to erase it, offers a case study in adaptation under pressure. Twentyman and Doughty stress that coastal residents facing similar threats should explore options early, including whether land availability, permits, and financing can align to support moving a dwelling rather than waiting for a catastrophe. The resilience they demonstrated is a reminder that climate-driven coastal hazards pose not just environmental concerns but complex financial and personal choices as well.

As sea levels continue to rise and coastal storms intensify, more homeowners along the Atlantic coast may confront similar decisions. The Rodanthe example underscores how climate risk is altering the calculus of property ownership on the coast, turning homes into dynamic assets that may require relocation to survive the next big storm.